I'm gonna be going on vacation soon. I'll be back in a week. i try to get Ch. 8 out by then.
I'd like to give a shout out to eatingworms, beyondthebatman, iknowthestrayphoenix (Please change your name, Patman. It sounds like you're a stalker or something), and quote-the-raven on fictionpresswho are my good friends on the computer and in life. Rock On, Guys!
Goblyn-Queen: Rachel is like 20-25 years old to me. I'm not sure about how old she is in the comics (the X-Men seem to be immortal)
jenskott: Jean doesn't fly inland for 3 reason: 1-She doesn't trust Scott and Emma alone, 2-she'd have to take the baby with her and that would wear her down, and 3-if she did, I'd have no story!
Wen1: After your review, I did some research and found that you are right and animals do have minds (sorry). I will correct it in this chapter. In comics, the telepaths can't read animal minds so I guess it's because their minds are not as advanced as ours. Thanks for the correction. It tells me you were paying attention. :)
Telepathic Angel: 'The X-Men Theme Song' took me about five minutes to come up with the rhyming. Like I said in my summary, I wrote it at 2 in the morning. My best and greatest ideas come to me right before I go to sleep. The ideas for 'Down Poison' and 'The seatbelt…' came to me at night too. Oddly enough, the idea for 'In the Dark' came to me while I was in the shower; then I went to sleep. The little rhyme in the earlier chapter took me about 2 minutes. What can I say? I'm a natural poet. D
strayphoenix is to X-Men like fake boobs are to Pamela Anderson. (No offense intended to Pamela fans) For those of you who suck at analogies, I don't own them.
IMPORTANT! When this story is finished, which will only be a few more chapters, I will officially post it under X-Men instead of X-Men: Evolution (where it's supposed to be.)
Chapter 7 of "the seatbelt sign should be on at all times" called "Fire in the Sky"
"So, Fearless Leader, any ideas how to get back home?"
Scott looked up from where he was viciously scrubbing at a blood stain in the hood of the Jet to the sound of Betsy's voice and smirked.
"What? You wanna leave already? Are you not having fun?"
"Of course I'm having fun!" she yelled in a mildly psychotic way, "There's nothing else I'd rather be doing right now than be sitting on the roof of the X-Jet for the eleventh day straight, in the middle of the Ocean with two infants who have the capability of being quiet for the maximum of 20 seconds, a sociopath who believes that we can survive the rest of our lives on a dozen bottles of Canadian beer, because that's all we have left to eat and/or drink by the way,…"
Logan looked up when he heard the comment about himself. He shrugged it off and took another long drag on his beer bottle.
"…a mad scientist who somehow finds it important to find the circumference ofa strand of seaweed…"
Hank had indeed succumbed to the insanity and was scratching down calculations with his nails on the hood of the Jet. A small strip of seaweed was lying motionlessly in front of him, enjoying the attention.
"…a child…"
She waved a hand in Rachel's direction. She was tickling the underside of one of the sharks who had flopped on deck and cooing at it.
"…two women who look like their going to pounce on each other at any given moment…"
Jean and Emma were both breast feeding their babies at opposite ends of the Jet with their backs facing each other.
"…and someone who's suffering from OCD!"
"Hey" Scott said in an offended tone while standing up, "I am not suffering from…oh dammit, missed a spot!" he crouched again and resumed scrubbing the stain.
She groaned.
"Canadian beer from the sociopath?"
The purple haired mutant looked over to where Logan was sitting and offering her a beer.
"I don't drink much…" she admitted.
"Oh, that's right" he said cleverly "you're the type that drowns out her sorrow with sex instead of alcohol"
She glared daggers at him before yanking the bottle from his hand with her TK, opening it the same way and chugging it down.
"Who's a cute sharkey warkey?" Rachel cooed at the shark while tickling it playfully. "I'm gonna call you Oscar. Can I keep him, daddy? Can I? Can I?"
"What is that thing still doing here anyway?" Emma asked slightly disgusted. "The others left after Emily fell asleep and lost control of them. Why did this one stay behind?"
"By the scent, I'd say that this shark was the youngest of the pack. Its mind was probably feebler than the others so Emily's influence on him could last longer or be permanent" hypothesized Logan.
"Animals don't have flamin' minds!" Jean explained in frustration. "They run on instinct! She could have confused his instinct with that of a dolphin but there is no mind in there! If there was, a telepath would be able to read it!"
"Actually…" Hank said, "animals do have minds. They're just aren't strong enough to be read by a telepathic mind."
"Wow. Miss Goddess can be wrong"
Jean's hair caught on fire as she stood up and began to make her way towards Emma.
She growled, "I told you not to call me that you…"
"Wait" Scott said. He jumped to his feet. "That's it!"
The X-Men exchanged glances.
"What's it, honey?" asked Jean as she dropped her Phoenix appearance and began to walk, not to Emma, but over to Scott.
He grabbed her shoulders and shook her slightly in his excitement.
"I can't believe I didn't think of this before! It's all…wait, you have a spot right there…"
He went to wipe the stain in her costume but he swatted his hand away.
"What's it?" she repeated.
"You Jean. Your Phoenix powers. They're not telepathic so our mini-Cerebro can't mute them out and they produce a huge peak of psychic energy that is sure to set off sirens at the Institute! They'll find our location, notice that it's in the middle of the Pacific, know something is wrong and come get us!"
The mutants got up and walked over from wherever they were to gather around Jean and Scott, hope is their eyes. Jean bit her lip, looked over to Hank who shrugged and then looked down at the floor.
"That's not going to work"
"WHAT? WHY NOT?" asked a shocked, disbelieving, and frustrated Betsy.
"Because…" said Jean, regret in her voice, "because I asked Hank to help me set up Cerebra so that the alarm wouldn't go off when I used my Phoenix powers. And before you tar and feather me, it's because every time I would use my powers while on a mission, the thing would go off and everyone would think it was another apocalypse for no reason."
"But it's not entirely that simple, right?" inquired Rachel in an almost desperate voice. "You must have put in some feature in case you went Dark Phoenix again, right?"
"Well, yeah, but…"
"Then just go to Dark Phoenix power levels and Scott's plan will still work" suggested Emma.
"If I went to Dark Phoenix power levels, I would become Dark Phoenix and all that rescue team would be doing is fishing dead bodies out of the water."
The friends shivered at the thought of another Dark Phoenix incident.
"I may not be that good at measuring infinity," Logan started, "but what if both Jeannie and Rachel manifested at the same time. Would that create enough psychic energy to set off Cerebra?"
The mother and daughter looked at each other and then at the sky.
"It's worth a shot" said Rachel.
"What do we have to loose, right?"
Just at that moment, Jessica finished breast feeding and started crying.
"Scott could you…?"
"No problem" he smiled warmly and took the baby from his wife, jostling her up and down in an effort to calm her.
Jean and Rachel stood back to back and grabbed each other's hands. Closing their eyes and concentrating, they both called upon the incredible power of the Phoenix that resided in them and they flared up, creating a humongous bird of fire between the both of them.
The onlookers took a step back and marveled at the phenomenon that was a Phoenix Manifestation.Oscar the shark dove under water to hide himself from the blinding Phoenix light.
Jessicaintensified her crying at the sight of the large fire bird and stretched out her tiny arms towards her mother which she instinctively trusted to protect her.
Jean smiled at her daughter.
"Not right now, Jessie. Mommy's…"
She trailed off as she caught sight of something. It wasn't something completely new; she had noticed it before but she had just thought it was a cut or a birthmark. But now, as her daughter's tiny left palm stretched towards her, she could distinctly make out the shape of the Phoenix symbol. And as the light from the sun touched it, it glowed a fiery red.
"She's just like me" Jean whispered sadly, with the slightest tint of pride in her voice.
"C'mere, Jessie" she called, levitating her daughter to her. She dropped Rachel's hands but kept up the bird of prey. Jessica Summers floated into the arms of her mother and immediately stopped crying. Her palm began glowing brighter as she snuggled into Jean's warm chest.
To the watching X-Men, the Phoenix grew about an inch, two at the most. No huge deal for them.
But miles and miles away, at least six different sirens were going off at the Xavier Institute for Gifted Youngster's where our fearless leader's fearless little brother was forming his own team of X-Men consisting of Rouge, Remy, Polaris, Iceman and himself.
"What's the emergency?" asked Remy as he tried to pull up his fly inconspicuously as his fiancé-until-I-can-get-enough-money-to-pay-for-a-wedding, Rouge, fixed her messed up hair. Alex didn't even need to ask.
"Apparently, the Cuckoos in Cerebra have picked up a huge energy spike somewhere in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. A closer examination also picked up other energy signatures that happen to be our X-Men."
"Aren't they supposed to be on a mission?" asked Iceman.
"Well…"
"Wait, Ah even have a bigger question. What was the huge energy spike?" this time the question came from Rouge.
"Cerebra registers it as a Phoenix manifestation"
His teammates gave him 'So what?' looks.
"Cerebra registers it as a Phoenix manifestation…times three…reaching very close to Dark Phoenix power levels."
"OK. See, now that's a decent excuse to wet your pants" said Gambit.
"I think your pants are already wet enough" said Bobby with a smirk.
Remy and Rouge blushed and with a warning glare at Iceman, turned their attention back to the matter at hand.
"So, ya'll think they're in danger?"
"No" quipped Lorna, "they're in the middle of the Pacific Ocean with Dark Phoenix because they want to be."
"Hey, no one said it was Dark Phoenix. I said it was close to Dark Phoenix"
"Yeah. And you also said it was times three. There's only Jean and Rachel with Phoenix powers. Whose number three?"
"Someone from the Summers bloodline who undoubtedly has Phoenix blood in their veins?" suggested Kurt as he entered the War Room.
"What do you mean, Nightcrawler?"
"Jean was pregnant when she left, right?"
Havoc's team of X-Men glanced at each other.
"If that's the case, we'd better get moving" said their leader as he stood up.
"I'm going with you" said the blue mutant firmly.
"And why would you want to go with us?" asked Havoc as he and his team headed for the hanger where they kept the X-Copter. He already knew the answer but he just wanted to see what lame excuse Kurt came up with this time.
"If the X-Men are in trouble, you guys might need a teleporter" he said casually, having rehearsed apparently.
"In case you didn't understand that," said Iceman, with a tease in his voice, "he said 'I want to go because my girlfriend is there and I want to do the knight in shining armor routine to impress her'"
Kurt glared at the Popsicle.
"Rachel isn't my girlfriend" then as a after though, added "…yet"
"I think by the fifth date you're already a considered a couple" said Rouge from experience, "and you guys have done eleven dates, three sleepovers (much to ol' One-Eye's disapproval) and many, many kisses."
Kurt sighed, and then chuckled.
"You know me too well, sis. For your own good and mine" he said. He was the last one to enter as the X-Copter took off towards the Pacific.
I have a question for all you fans of the comics out there. Currently, in comics, there are three core X-Men teams: Astonishing X-Men, Uncanny X-Men, and X-Men. They all go to different places, do different things and stay for different amounts of time yet they all use the One and Only X-Jet as their means of transportation. How the Flamin' Phoenix does that work out? 1 jet ÷ 3 teams impossible? Send your explanations in your reviews.
Huzzah!